The Documentary, premiering at the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles.

On Sunday, November 9, at 7:00 p.m. the Museum of Tolerance commemorates the 65th anniversary of the infamous 1938 Nazi “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht) program which targeted 1,000 synagogues in Germany and Austria and marked the beginning of the end of European Jewry.
The commemoration will be highlighted by the screening of a documentary by renowned Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein, 9th November Night, who has committed himself and his art to reminding the world of the Holocaust. The documentary is based upon his 1988 exhibit of seventeen children’s portraits that were displayed in commemoration of Kristallnacht in Cologne, Germany. Just days into the exhibit, these portraits were vandalized.. “The fury with which the neo-nazis reacted to these portraits is understandable inasmuch as it is the very same fury with which they have for years been fighting against The Diary of Anne Frank,” said famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. “The murder of children rouses abhorrence and conflict in every human, whether they are motivated by ideology or insanity. The urge to destroy has survived; the portraits bear witness to its rage.”

On November 9th, 2003, for the 65th anniversary of “Kristallnacht”,NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT, a documentary on the art of Gottfried Helnweinpremiered at the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles.

October 28, 2003WHERE:Museum of Tolerance9786 W. Pico Blvd. (corner Pico and Roxbury)WHEN:Sunday, November 9th, 2003 at 7:00 p.m.Holocaust survivors, community activists, and diplomats will gather at the Museum of Tolerance on November 9th, 2003 to mark the 65th anniversary of the infamous 1938 Nazi "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) pogrom which targeted 1,000 synagogues in Germany and Austria and marked the beginning of the end of European Jewry.The commemoration will include the screening of 9th November Night, a short documentary by renowned Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein, based upon his 1988 exhibit of seventeen children's portraits that were displayed to commemorate Kristallnacht in Cologne, Germany. Just days into the exhibit, these portraits were vandalized. "The murder of children rouses abhorrence and conflict in every human, whether they are motivated by ideology or insanity," famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal said of the exhibit and its subsequent defacement. "The urge to destroy has survived; the portraits bear witness to its rage."Helnwein, who has committed himself and his art to reminding the world of the Holocaust, will engage in a dialogue of how we can assure that the darkest depths of man�s inhumanity will never be forgotten. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Museum of Tolerance's founder and dean, will also address participants.

THE ARTIST - GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN

Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's work is collected by many of the world's leading museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has been presented in significant one-man exhibitions in such venues as the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, the Stadtmuseum Munich, the Fine Arts Museum in Otaru, Japan, the Musee' De L' Elysee, Lausanne in Switzeland and others.He is currently preparing exhibitions for 2004 at the Fine Arts Museum San Francisco and the Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, China.Mr. Helnwein, born after World War II and not a Jew, became aware during childhood of Austria's and Germany's active involvement in the hatred and atrocities of Nazism, and chose to speak out publicly and through his art, lest a country forget the past, forgive itself and repeat its errors.

1988, 50 years after the infamous "Kristallnacht" Helnwein erected a 100 meter long wall of pictures in the city center of Cologne, between the Ludwig Museum and the Cathedral to commemorate this night.He confronted the passers-by with larger-than-life children's faces in a seemingly endless row – children lined up as though “to be sorted”.The central theme in Gottfried Helnwein’s work is the human being. As a victim but also as a perpetrator. No other German-speaking artist of the post-war generation has so hauntingly dealt with the National Socialistic legacy and such issues as fascism, violence and intolerance.He has developed his own provocative, disturbing and to some extent shocking visual language in which its passion above all is dedicated to the weakest of the victims: the children. His images are a constant silent appeal against collective denial and repression.Helnwein's installation "Ninth November Night- Selektion" has been shown in many German cities, amongst them Berlin and Cologne but also in Russia, Switzeland, Japan and Ireland.The screening of his brief documentary, "Ninth November Night" at the Museum of Tolerance comes at a time so in need of its message of remembrance and tolerance.He currently lives in Los Angeles and in the Republic of Ireland (where he is working on a portrait of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber for the National Portrait Gallery in London). His art installations in Public spaces throughout the world include monumental images - some of them several stories high, which have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna and recently in the city of Kilkenny in Ireland, where he showed huge pictures of Irish children, which covered many of the tallest buildings in the city.Helnwein has a studio in the Arts district in downtown, Los Angeles.

Ninth November Night

Installation, 1996, 400 x 1000 cm / 157 x 393''

Thanks

The documentary and this catalogue were made possible thanks to the generous assistance of the Austrian Federal Chancellery, Department of Culture,the Modernism Gallery San Francisco and Mary and Steven Swig.Special thanks to Gisela Guttman and Renate Helnwein for their endless support and passion for this project.And thanks to everybody who supported the presentation of the Ninth November Night project of Gottfried Helnwein in Los Angeles, to Franz Morak, Austrian Secretary of State for the Arts and Media, to Mr. Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, Consul General of Austria, Martin Muller, Gavin Spanierman, Spanierman Contemporary, N.Y.C; Claudia Teissig, Jason Lee, Hans Janitschek, Ariane Riecker, Van Carlson, Mary Rodriguez, Mercedes Helnwein, and to the Simon Wiesenthal Center / Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles, Liebe Geft, Director and Lorraine Sais, Coordinator, Arts and Lectures for hosting the presentation.

Artist and artist representative, spent her childhood in war torn Nazi Germany. A Catholic, she lived a childhood of deprivation and danger as a displaced person. She was on of the few members of her kindergarten class to survive the 1942 bombings that leveled her native city of Cologne. Following the war, she learned the full truth and lessons of the Holocaust, and felt compelled (like Helnwein) to find ways to perpetuate the memory and awareness of what intolerance can wreak.

COMMEMORATION OF THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INFAMOUS NAZI “KRISTALLNACHT” 1938 AND PREMIERE OF THE HELNWEIN DOCUMENTARY

SURVIVORS, ACTIVISTS, DIPLOMATS AND CELEBRITIES JOIN AT MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE TO COMMEMORATE

On Sunday, November 9, at 7:00 p.m. the Museum of Tolerance commemorated the 65th anniversary of the infamous 1938 Nazi “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht) pogrom.

In fact, his work is insistently open-ended. Like Goya's Disasters of War, his art queries time and again, "How can this have happened?" Sometimes viewers reply, assaulting pictures of innocent children, worshipping those of a murderous dictator. Yet such reactions can only bring us to inquire again, louder and with greater urgency, "How can this have happened?" At last we recognize that Helnwein asks questions not in order to solicit answers - hate has no reason - but rather in order that we might begin to pose our own.